All of those stories about my interview-fear date from the beginning of the band. At the time of our first interviews everything was new and unclear, so I usually was staring at a reporter with this big question mark above my head. I just didn't know it then. It was too new, and I was nervous and paranoid.

Bono has a big voice, yes, but let him sing over a Portishead trac, and there's nothing left of it.

I am a very sensitive person, very impulsive and emotional.

I still don't like doing interviews. I hardly do any... I hope this will be the last one for a long while.

I think that after a year of Portishead I've become a little more sober.

I thought I had a clear picture of death, but now I know it's a mystery and it will always be a mystery, although it is something we all have in common: everybody knows that life ends with death.

I try to imagine how we would live if we didn't know we were going to die. Would we live our lives differently? Less careful, maybe? Less scared? These are beautiful things to think about and build a song around.

I wanted to do live things, needed an audience. Geoff was more of a studio-guy. A real programmer. So pretty soon it was: nice to meet you, bye.

I've had a wordless phase, and that's still not entirely over: what I sing is not always literally meant that way, and you can hear that in the way it is sung.

I've just put my heart and soul in a song and need at least a week to recover.

Let's get one thing straight: there's no such thing as the Bristol sound.

Most of the lyrics are over a year old, and it doesn't feel like it's about me. Time created a distance.

My voice adapts itself to the music. I can do a lot more than you hear in Portishead.

Portishead-brain Geoff Barrow was the poor guy who made the tea and sandwiches and was allowed to press a few unimportant buttons in the studio while Massive Attack were making their debut Blue Lines in 1990.

The music comes first. When Geoff has made something the inspiration comes automatically. His music is very expressive. But still is is a very difficult process: I have to add something to his music, not push it away. It has to be equal, and I find that very difficult.

There's no romantic Seattle or Manchester-like offensive of musical solidarity feeling in Bristol.

There's not only emotion in the way you sing but also in what you sing. That way I can compensate it.

We're not Bon Jovi, you know.

We're thinking about printing the lyrics with the next record so that people can find their own meaning in them. But then they would start having a life of their own, and I think the Portishead music should stay a whole in which the lyrics come second, actually.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.